I've been sitting in the Las Vegas airport for a few hours waiting for my flight back to Boston, and I thought it would be as good a time as any to catch up on the blog.
We've been flitting from here to there this month. The first two weeks of August, Nicholas and I went back to Grandma and Grandpa's house for Cousin's Camp. All the grandkids get together to play and have fun--- it's great. Nicholas came to cousin's camp saying a handful of words, and by the end of day one was almost talking to me in full sentences. It's amazing what exposure to older, cooler kids can do to motivate someone :)
Nicholas loved having Jane, a cousin just one month older than he is, to hang out with. He woke up every morning and from every nap asking, "Jane? Jane?" with his hands in a shrug. He also liked to chase Xander, Max, and Brandon around, wishing he was big enough to play with them.
I looked over one morning before we went upstairs and saw Nicholas on the floor like this:
I laughed so hard. I've never seen him do this before, and I wondered where in the world he learned it! When I told my mom, she was thoroughly un-surprised because apparently I used to chew on my toes as well. I have no recollection of this. My best friend, Lissy Largin, verified that account....which means that I was probably much older than Nicholas when I did it. Gross.
We went to the Indianapolis and Cincinnati Children's museums while we were back in Indiana. Here are some shots:
Nicholas as a Transformer.
Josh and Nicholas on a life-sized crocodile (or alligator? I don't really know which) in the Egypt exhibit.
Nicholas on the Barbie Fashion Show Runway at the Indianapolis museum's Barbie exhibit. He loved it, despite what this picture shows. He kept running backstage to come walk down the runway again :) It was actually pretty cool because they had lights and cameras set up to make you feel like you were in a real runway show, and there were chairs set up for the parents to watch. The kids would go "backstage" where they could try on dress-up clothes and then come out and model them to the pulsing music and lights. Claire, Emily and Madi stayed here for-EVER, and then Josh, Adam and Quincy started doing their runway walks. At first they were laughing and just running down the runway, but pretty soon they had put on vests and scarves of their own and were stopping at the end of the runway to pose in a manly fashion :) It was pretty funny.
The slide was a lot faster than he expected :)
Nicholas spied these trains in display cases from halfway across the room, and he kept squealing and begging me to open the case so he could play with the trains. "Please, please? Open, open? Please please!" Then we finally found a train table he
could play with and he stayed there almost the rest of the time.
He was GREAT on all the flights. Luckily there was internet access available for free on our flight---some promo by Coke--- and he could watch Word World. It was nice.
Then, after two weeks we went back to Boston where I left Nicholas with Mando and flew to Utah for Education week. I thought a week without a child would be liberating and a "nice little break," but I was actually slightly miserable the whole time. It might more to do with hormones than anything else, but I missed them so much! I felt like I was missing my right arm not having Nicholas there. Actually, I guess it was more like I had a newly discovered left hand (which is usually occupied holding him or helping him) and didn't know quite what to do with it.
